Articles

24 September 2011

THE CLASSROOM, published in 2010 features an essay "Connecting Learning and Learning Environments". Through the article, Peter Brown establishes a precedent for intertwining education and design, then illustrates ideas shaping the next generations of school design based on shifts that are occurring within the current educational landscape. The book is available from WASMUTH. This post is number seven in a series of seven.

The culture of a school both reflects and shapes the culture of the local community. In addition, school facilities are a significant capital investment, most often funded over many years by the school community. The ongoing stewardship of nurturing a school campus and sustaining a school culture is an important element of the ongoing and generational success of the school.

While the primary purposes of school facilities are educating students, a school facility has many constituents. Understanding the value systems of the constituents plays an important role in creating a school culture that is supported and nurtured by the community. The school then becomes a network of interested groups that support the learning and developmental goals of students.

At the center of the network are learning goals for individual students. These goals are facilitated by anticipating the tools, spaces, and organizational structures of teaching and learning. Local schools and school district have administrative responsibilities related to operating schools, ranging from financial and educational accountability to maintaining a secure learning environment. Parents are key stakeholders in student success and the transfer of school culture from generation to generation. And the community is a significant stakeholder–strategically organized, schools play an important role in cultural, workforce, economic, and community development. Developing layered strategies to address opportunities for a school’s constituents enhances the ongoing sustainability of a school and community culture.

Riverview High School (originally established in the 1950s) in Sarasota, Florida, envisioned a replacement high school designed to prepare students for success in the coming workforce – organizing 3,000 students by learning communities of 300, focusing curricular content on student interests, and supporting one-to-one student computers. Having outgrown the enrollment capacity of the original campus, and at the same time implementing a significant departure in curriculum, instruction, and physical organization of students, the school board elected to demolish the existing structure and rebuild on the same site.

The existing structure was a significant modern building by Paul Rudolph and widely recognized nationally and internationally as a seminal representation of the Sarasota School of Architecture. Expressive of a flexible steel frame and glass in-fill, the building was a demonstration of sustainable design for schools and for buildings in subtropical climates. Shading devices deflected the sun away from the building skin and reflected softer natural light into the building. With one full wall of windows in classrooms and three walls of clerestories, natural daylight filled the learning environments and natural ventilation flowed through the campus.

image courtesy Sarasota Architecture Foundation

In 2008, an international design competition was held to explore alternate possibilities for Rudolph’s historic modern structure. The winning entry, submitted by Diane Lewis Architects, RMJM Hiller, and Beckelman+Capilino, proposed The Riverview Music Quadrangle. This music conservatory would consolidate and provide a permanent home for national and international programs already in operation in the Sarasota area. Classrooms converted to rehearsal studios, the courtyard converted to a large performance venue, and the dining facilities converted to galleries for music performances, banquets, and social events. The program was designed to support the new Riverview High School campus as well as the regional community in attracting world-class musicians to teach, research, and perform for the community.

image courtesy Diane Lewis Architects

The Riverview Music Quadrangle would therefore exist as an independent organization colocated on the school site. As a site strategy, a campus green bordered by a landscaped hedge was slipped under the existing Rudolph building, creating a lawn, or garden, to organize the campus and reestablish a historic campus green that was traditionally used by the school’s marching band for rehearsals and impromptu community performances. The hedge organized the site into clear functional zones for both the Quadrangle and the school and, in doing so, created a pedestrian-oriented campus instead of an auto-oriented campus.

image courtesy Diane Lewis Architects

In terms of stewardship, the Riverview Music Quadrangle proposal, preserved a significant financial asset for the community, restored a national cultural asset, developed programmatic synergy for the education community, and consolidated community arts and educational resources.

In Dallas, Texas, as a part of a $1.4 billion bond program, a new middle school was established in a socially and economically depressed area of the city. The project connected four city blocks to create Hector Garcia Middle School, a 13-acre campus for 1,200 students aged 11 to 14.

As an organizing strategy, the building is situated toward the north end of the site, creating an urban plaza at the street edge and allowing sports fields in the south. Classrooms placed along the north side of the building collect the north light and offer sweeping views of the city. Program areas that require less daylight are placed on the south side of the building, creating a natural buffer for the south light and heat gain. Areas that can be used by the public­ – gym, library, auditorium, and dining hall – are located at the edges of the building to invite and encourage the community to use the facility. Classrooms overlook the city, and the windows become teaching aids for teachers, describing activities at the fairgrounds, commerce centers, the city’s airports, and healthcare centers.

The school offers a bold strategy for addressing education in depressed areas. An inventory of nearby community assets placed the new school within four blocks of the city zoo, within two blocks of two elementary schools, eight blocks from a neighborhood high school, and six blocks from a nationally recognized magnet high school. The site for the middle school became a connecting point and resource for neighboring community assets. Instead of a site strategy that responded only to existing conditions, the building looks forward, anticipates, and encourages the neighborhood and the school community to think differently about itself, to leverage educational development as a vehicle for community, economic, and workforce development.

The conversations that shape ideas about learning and learning environments are critical as designers and educators work together to envision and create places for learning. The continual push for performance by schools and communities provides a rich terrain for innovative ideas for educational challenges. While new technologies and legislative and funding pressures for performance invite new ideas, conversations between educators and designers are critical in creating fundamentally human places: spaces that inspire the wonder of learning, celebrate the acquisition of knowledge, and bring understanding of context for an individual to their peers, community, and world. The School Museum at VS reflects on these innovations in the past century and through demonstration encourages this generation of educators and designers to continue the conversations.

PETER BROWN was the liasion for the Sarasota Architecture Foundation in communications with the school board during the Riverview competition process and the Principal Architect for Hector Garcia Middle School.

15 March 2011

THE CLASSROOM, published in 2010 features an essay "Connecting Learning and Learning Environments". Through the article, Peter Brown establishes a precedent for intertwining education and design, then illustrates ideas shaping the next generations of school design based on shifts that are occurring within the current educational landscape. The book is available from WASMUTH. This post is number six in a series of seven.

In the coming years, the integration of technology has the potential create fundamental changes in the relationship between learning and learning environments. For the first time in history, at a large scale, technology allows for students in the classroom to connect with resources outside of the classroom. Additionally, resources that have historically only been available in the classroom are available anytime and any place, and lessons can be extended to occur outside of class time. Access to online course work allows content to be customized for individual student abilities, preferences, and pace. Real-time assessments inform teachers of daily progress of students.

The availability of content resources in and out of class time provides opportunities for significant changes in activities during the day as well as the utilization of spaces within a school facility. In Sweden, Kunskapsskolan (or Knowledge School) provides a highly customized education for students in the middle years through high school. Entering students set educational goals, which start at the desired end result and are factored into yearly goals, semester goals, weekly goals and daily goals. The core content is delivered through a digital portal, allowing students to move through the curriculum at their own pace to meet individual goals.

At the beginning of each week, students create a weekly plan that organizes individual educational goals and related time schedules. Each student in the school has a personalized, individualized schedule based on their individual goals. Teachers post weekly lecture schedules and work with students both formally and informally. In additional to traditional classroom and lecture spaces, the schools incorporate many places for individual and small group work. Corridors are eliminated in favor of formal and informal work areas. At any given time, students are completely utilizing the building, either in formal teaching spaces or informal learning groupings, teams of students working together to solve problems. At Kunskapsskolan, the digital portal allows a structure for course work that provides a great freedom in choosing how time is utilized, spaces are utilized, and teacher-student relationships are enhanced.

While technology is changing quickly, there are known elements that can be used in planning: We know that technology is continually faster and smaller. Small technology has much less of a spatial impact on the design of facilities than operational impact. The human component of education also provides known elements that can be used in design. Students need places for academic work and activity work and for working in groups and individually. There are some elements in planning for technology that are not known and that need flexibility for change as educational models transform: What does it mean to be networked to resources outside of classrooms; How to manage content and educational relationships that occur outside of the classroom; How to structure time and space to accommodate individual student pace; How to individualize content for student ability and interest.

THE CLASSROOM, published in 2010 features an essay "Connecting Learning and Learning Environments". Through the article, Peter Brown establishes a precedent for intertwining education and design, then illustrates ideas shaping the next generations of school design based on shifts that are occurring within the current educational landscape. The book is available from WASMUTH. This post is number five in a series of seven.

A significant shift has occurred in U.S. schools over the last decade: National laws requiring public schools to demonstrate that all students reach a base-line standard of knowledge. Traditionally, school performance models based on bell curves have been successful for easy-to-teach students, but less so for hard-to-teach students that are at the extremities of the curve­ – those students requiring acceleration or remediation. With the goal of reaching every student, schools are making strategic adjustments in many program and operational areas: evaluating curriculum, the organization of students into academic teams, the organization of time during the school day or week, working with educational and/or community partners, and in many cases increasing educational specialists working in small groups or one-on-one with students.

Increasingly, at the high school level, schools are organizing into small learning communities: students and teachers organized by small teams to better meet the academic and social needs of students. Small learning communities provide greater autonomy to the academic teams and often focus curriculum on topics or themes that are engaging to students. Academic teams generally offer a collection of spaces types that accommodate lectures, working in small groups, working on projects, and making presentations.

Schools are also looking at organizing time to allow large blocks of time to engage into the learning process. Barnette Magnet School, a K-8 magnet school in Fairbanks, Alaska, operates a program with both grade-level and multiage classes. In morning sessions, core teachers have three-hour blocks of uninterrupted time to cover core subjects in grade-level classes. In the afternoon, the school transforms into a multigrade exploratory program, offering courses that focus on student interest: music, dance, language, reading, science, robotics, plants, animals, and sports. The afternoon time slots also allow for acceleration and remediation in academic subjects. At the end of the week, students have the opportunity for “Friday in Fairbanks,” an unstructured time to allow students to take courses or lessons outside of the school – music, athletics, arts, or other community-based programs. The daily transformation from 16 classes of 24 students in the morning to approximately 32 classes of 12 students in the afternoon requires a facility strategy that can flex daily with the program. As school organizations look at strategies to reach the learning needs of all students, facility strategies are evolving to support the program.

02 February 2011

THE CLASSROOM, published in 2010 features an essay "Connecting Learning and Learning Environments". Through the article, Peter Brown establishes a precedent for intertwining education and design, then illustrates ideas shaping the next generations of school design based on shifts that are occurring within the current educational landscape. The book is available from WASMUTH. This post is number four in a series of seven.

Change is a fundamental issue in school planning­ – not whether a school will change, but how often. Flexible schools acknowledge that educational change will occur and are equipped to accommodate operational changes with ease.

Current funding models for public schools in the United States provide capital funding at the beginning of a building’s life span and ongoing operating funding over the life span of a facility. Rarely are additional significant capital funds available for several decades after the initial investment. Unlike corporate environments that occupy core and shell lease spaces that are renovated every 5to 10 years, school facilities rarely have the opportunity to retool their buildings to address ongoing operational changes and are often required to make do with spaces initially provided.

Schools also have varying horizons for changes: decade-by-decade, year-by-year, term-by-term, or changes that can occur daily. Three planning strategies that address operational change in educational environments are flexible planning, flexible spaces, and flexible classrooms.

Levelland – a cotton and petroleum producing community in West Texas – explored flexible planning concepts for their replacement elementary schools. With a site situated at the juncture between commercial and residential, the school design places public functions to the street, effectively extending the central business district on one side, and nestles academic teams toward the residential areas of the community.

The planning of the elementary schools is organized into flexible academic teams of 120 students and 6 teachers each. Over the life cycle of the school, team structures can change to allow grade level groupings, various styles of multiage groupings, even supporting a series of small schools with the overall structure. Considering a range of organizational strategies in the planning process allows the school to change operationally without significant (or any) renovations to accommodate organizational change.

The academic teams are programmed with a range of educational spaces to allow whole group, small group, large group, formal, and informal instruction. Classrooms open onto student resource commons, eliminating corridors, and expanding educational opportunities outside of classroom areas. The resource commons allows informal learning, group performances, large group lectures, and places to display and demonstrate the work product of students.

Classrooms are planned with a flexible furniture package that can be quickly reorganized to accommodate a range of instructional styles. Walls are retained for presentations, whole group discussions, small group discussions, and individual work, and can accommodate projection, writing, and display of student work. A variety of furniture types encourages formal and informal discussions, can be transformed to allow traditional lectures, seminars, group work, and individual work, and at times can be rolled away to allow presentations and performances. This degree of flexibility extends the functional life of the school by anticipating and encouraging change.

THE CLASSROOM, published in 2010 features an essay "Connecting Learning and Learning Environments". Through the article, Peter Brown establishes a precedent for intertwining education and design, then illustrates ideas shaping the next generations of school design based on shifts that are occurring within the current educational landscape. The book is available from WASMUTH. This post is number three in a series of seven.

In a high-performance context, the design of learning environments looks beyond aesthetics as a primary driver of FORM to buildings shaped by their PERFORMANCE requirements. Performance related to teaching and learning. Performance related to sustainability, light, energy, comfort, and movement. Performance related to being healthy, growing, and thinking beings. Performance related to reinforcing human connections, technology, networks, and communication. Performance related to context of the child, families, neighborhoods, and local and global communities. Performance related to meeting educational programs and responding to change.

Schools intentionally designed to meet a demanding range of requirements follow a process that addresses four key elements:

Strategy: defining desired outcomes and the direction to achieve the outcomes.

Programming: identifying components necessary to reach the outcomes.

Planning: establishing order, structure, and relationships among the components.

Design: elegantly integrating the components.

Building processes that engage educators, designers, and architects in meaningful discussions about the desired outcomes of the school, the educational philosophy, and the curricular and instructional path the school takes in reaching the goals create a dynamic intertwining of learning and learning environment. In this way design is considered a component of the teaching and learning process, providing resources for students and teachers to do their work, anticipating the next move, and allowing education to drive the process (rather than be limited by low-performing spaces).

In recent years, a growing body of research and writing establishes positive links between learning and the places where learning occurs. The Third Teacher: 79 Ways You Can Use Design to Transform Teaching & Learning – published in 2010 by VS Furniture, OWP/P Architects, and Bruce Mao Design – provides a comprehensive survey of practical and transformations ideas for learning environments. Ideas that address basic human needs, enhance community connections, engage more of the senses, and support the human dynamics of learning. Elements in creating learning environments that respond to the physical, social, and cognitive development of people.

One way of transforming learning environments is through sustainable design. Research indicates that sustainable design strategies not only improve building performance but also improve learning performance. Daylighting, Acoustics, Color, Ergonomics, School Organization, all play an important role in boosting learning results. Studies show that improved daylighting can increase reading and math test scores 20% and 26%, respectively. Students in spaces with improved acoustics score higher on work recognition tests. Effective use of color can reduce aggressive behavior in schools. Selecting furniture systems that accommodate student movement increases memory and concentration. Small schools show a reduction in absences and increased graduation rates. A strategic approach to bricks and mortar in the design of schools offers a baseline of improved student performance. The intertwining of educational ideas and design ideas opens opportunities for connections between learning and the learning environment. Educators, designers, and architects working together to listen, observe, and understand the aspirations of the educational process and responding with design solutions that meet current needs and anticipate future directions. Design solutions that are effective and inspiring places for teaching, for learning, and for people.

31 January 2011

THE CLASSROOM, published in 2010 features an essay "Connecting Learning and Learning Environments". Through the article, Peter Brown establishes a precedent for intertwining education and design, then illustrates ideas shaping the next generations of school design based on shifts that are occurring within the current educational landscape. The book is available from WASMUTH. This post is number two in a series of seven.

The VS school museum illustrates educational changes in the twentieth century as a response to substantial societal shifts. Population shifts from rural to urban to suburban. Economic shifts from agriculture and industry to technology and innovation. Shifts in ideals related to human rights, providing opportunities for equal educational opportunities for all people.

Ideas for school buildings have responded to these shifts with various facility models: Moving from one-room rural schools to multiroom urban schools, then to comprehensive departmental high schools created to address a surging suburban population and to develop the population for a changing workforce. Junior High Schools or “mini high schools” transformed into middle schools that address rapid changes in middle-year students.

Historically, schools have been designed as 100-year buildings, and school operation has remained static­ enough that buildings could meet their intended function for decades. Since the mid-1990s, a series of interjections have occurred in educational environments that has accelerated the rate of operational and related facility changes. Federal legislation in the United States now requires demonstrated academic performance of ALL students, which has created new instructional strategies designed to reach a wide spectrum of learners. Schools are being reorganized to increase connections between students, teachers, and curriculum and are often arranged into academic teams grouping a small group of students with a small group of teachers. Technologies introduced into learning environments provide increasing opportunities for students and teachers to connect with experiences outside of the classroom. This shift is changing time utilization in schools, how project work is created and delivered, and the collaborative relationship between student and teacher. The rate of operational changes in recent years are indicators that school buildings could likely change many times during the functional life of a school building.

As designers and educators work to create new scenarios that allow students to excel, school organizations continue to face a range of societal issues: measuring student performance and teaching effectiveness, funding strains for capital and operational expenditures, demonstrating ongoing community value, and preparing a workforce for a global society.

Ideas shaping the next generation of school design

The museum demonstrates the value of the close collaboration of educators, architects, and designers in creating meaningful places for teaching and learning, places that respond to ongoing societal and educational shifts. The collection establishes the importance of linking education and design in creating effective learning environments.

Looking forward – as a collective group of people responsible for shaping learning environments – what issues affecting school design belong to the current generation of educators and designers to resolve?

As emphasis is placed on student performance, teaching performance, and building performance, school organizations are under increasing pressure to deliver results. In this climate, ideas that are shaping the next generation of educational facility models respond at some level to five key questions:

24 November 2010

THE CLASSROOM, published in 2010 by the Wasmuth Publishing House, features a chapter "Connecting Learning and Learning Environments" in which Peter Brown establishes a precedent for intertwining education and design, then illustrates ideas shaping the next generations of school design based on shifts that are occurring within the current educational landscape. The book is available from WASMUTH. This post is number one in a series of seven.

At first review, the VS school museum provides a survey of developments in school furnishings over the last century. Having spent considerable time with the collection, the museum reflects a rich interplay among societal forces at work during the twentieth century. The pieces can be understood at many levels: manufacturing technology, educational philosophy, educational technology, school operations, social ideals, social progress, philosophy of ergonomics, and design philosophy. The museum represents the creative discussions occurring over a period of 100 years between educators, product designers, and architects intertwining their diverse perspectives to create meaningful environments for teaching and learning.

In this light, the museum provides a catalogue of design innovation in response to a wide range of educational processes and ideals. Early practical innovations allowed floors to be cleaned efficiently and the ability to use ink without spilling reservoirs. Bauhaus designers honed relationships between materials and function, creating beautifully minimal responses to furniture for learning. In the furniture of Crow Island School, Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames explored new technologies in bent plywood and created seating scaled to students. Seat profiles for kindergarteners step up in scale as grade levels increase, allowing each member of the school community to be comfortable in furniture – just the right size with feet on the floor.

Crow Island School – designed in 1939 by Eliel Saarinen with Perkins, Wheeler and Will as a collaboration between educators and designers – marks a seminal point in the interrelationship between educational design, architectural design, and furniture design. Widely understood as “the first modern school,” the building planning is a direct response to John Dewey’s philosophy of progressive education. A repeating classroom module was developed that allows students and teachers close access to spatial resources required for the educational model: places for academic work by groups and individuals, places for activity work by groups and individuals, places for instructional storage, and student restrooms. Each of the self-contained modules provides access to whole group space, small group space, an outdoor classroom, and large group space. This collection of spaces allows a range of resources for students and teachers to learn and explore.

The design response to the educational program at Crow Island is noteworthy. It has been explored over the last 70 years in similar formats: The Darmstadt School by Hans Scharoun, is an organic response.The Monkegaard School in Copenhagen by Arne Jacobsen creates an ordered system of classrooms and courtyards. And like Saarinen at Crow Island, Jacobsen provided a complete design package from chairs, desks, textiles, lighting, and door hardware. Herman Hertzberger’s Delft Montessori School provides an interior-focused version, providing a similar mix of learning spaces: dynamic places for individual and group academics and hands-on activities.

Perhaps the most important lesson from Crow Island, however, is a lesson of process: Educators working together with architects and furniture designers to understand essential educational goals, translating educational ideas into a language that designers understand, and developing flexible design solutions for spaces that support educational ideas. The process allows designers to shape environments that facilitate the work of students and teachers engaged in learning. Environments that anticipate physical, emotional, and educational needs and gracefully respond to those needs with a “yes.”